The question of the Homeland of the Indo-European (IE) or “Aryan” language family is, as riddles in the otherwise prosaic field of historical linguistics go, of unusual importance. It pits essentially two theories against one another. Either ancestral Proto-Indo-European (PIE), mother of most Indian and European languages, was spoken in Northwestern India, some 6000 years ago. This was the dominant view for some forty years after the close kinship between these languages had been announced by William Jones in 1786. It was revived amid lots of commotion around 1990, and since 1996 it is known as the Out-of-India Theory (OIT). Alternatively, it was spoken outside India, in Homelands ranging from Bactria to Anatolia, but now most popularly accepted to have been Southwestern Russia. As these more westerly Homelands all imply that the Indian branch of this language family had entered India from abroad, probably some 3600 years ago, this alternative is called the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT), or with a more recent weasel word, the Aryan Migration Theory (AMT). This theory has led to the grossest political abuse: by British colonialism, by German National-Socialism, and even now by Dravidianism, Ambedkarism and other “Breaking India” forces. Nevertheless, most scholars still swear by it because they assume that someone somewhere must have proven it, otherwise it wouldn't have become the official theory. But this assumption is in need of verification. Over the years, Dr. Koenraad Elst has devoted a number of scholarly papers and journalistic articles to this controversy. For easy future reference, they have been collected here.

Preface

1. Manu as a Weapon Against Egalitarianism: Nietzsche and Hindu Political Philosophy
2. A Great Book about the Great Book
3. Still No Trace of an Aryan Invasion
4. The Ethnic Meaning of “Arya”
5. Mapping the Sarasvati: A Review of The Lost River by Michel Danino
6. The Buddha and Caste
7. The Indo-Aryan Controversy is a Real Debate: A Reply to Nicholas Kazanas
8. A Nazi Out-of-India Theory?
9. Some Unlikely Tentacles of Early Indo-European
10. Globalization of Mythology
11. Hindu Month in California and the Lessons from the Textbook Controversy
12. An Indo-European Conference
13. The “Varna Event” and the Indo-European Homeland Question
14. The Aryan Non-Invasion Theory
15. The Leipzig Conference
16. The Kozhikode Vedic Workshop
17. “Horseplay at Harappa” Revisited
18. Rajaram, Witzel, and Racism
19. Witzel at SOAS
20. Moralism and the Aryan Invasion Theory
21. Why Linguistics Necessarily Holds the Key to the Solution of the Indo-European Homeland Question
22. The Conflict Between Vedic Aryans and Iranians
23. The Concept of Pakistan in the Vedas
24. The Vedic Harappans Excavated
25. The Andronovo Cradle of the Indo-Iranians?
26. The Rigvedic Hymn to Vasistha: The Oldest Attested Divinization
27. Convergence of Evidence on a Chronology of the Mahabharata War
28. Sheldon Pollock’s Idea of a National-Socialist Indology
29. The Chinese Self-designation Hua and the Root-word Arya
30. Genetics and the Aryan Invasion Debate

Index

Koenraad Elst (°Leuven 1959) distinguished himself early on as eager to learn and to dissent. In a youthful zest to find the truth, he took up qigong and yoga along with the study of the concomitant worldviews. He put his interest in Oriental wisdom traditions on a firmer footing by obtaining MA degrees in Sinology, Indology and Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. During a research stay at Benares Hindu University he discovered India’s communal controversy and subsequently did original fieldwork for a doctorate on Hindu Revivalism, which he obtained magna cum laude in 1998. As an independent scholar he earned laurels and ostracism with his findings on hot items like the genesis and differential essence of the word’s religions; multiculturalism and the secular state; the roots of Indo-European; the Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute; and Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy. He made a living with political journalism, as a foreign policy assistant in the Belgian Senate and as a Visiting Professor, but has always considered writing and research as his main vocation.

No review available. Add your review. You could be the first one.
Please Login